With a Little Help From My Friends
by Pir8grl
Summary: The Doctor's newest companion needs a little help from some of his old companions to save him.
1. Chapter 1

The TARDIS hummed contentedly all along her circuitry as she went about her daily business of hurtling through time and space, and protecting the two souls who currently dwelt within her confines. She liked the Doctor's newest companion, Clara. She was so clever and sweet. No, the TARDIS reminded herself, the human girl did not care to be called sweet. She was, though, and the Doctor thought so as well. And she wasn't nearly as much trouble as some of the others. Leela, for example, who had required near constant physical activity, or that wretched boy Turlough, who was always looking for things to break. Although one never did know which of her systems Clara would decide to explore next. All in all, the TARDIS decided that Clara reminded her just a bit of Nyssa.

The fraction of the TARDIS's awareness that monitored her passengers' life signs noted a (to her, anyway) minor anomaly in the Doctor's readings.

* * *

Clara stirred in her sleep, wondering vaguely what had woken her. Her head rested on the Doctor's chest and the beating of his hearts was a rapid rhythm against her cheek. One of his arms was wrapped around her and she was very warm. Too warm.

Abruptly startled into full wakefulness, Clara sat up and touched his face. The Doctor was burning with fever. "Doctor! Doctor, wake up!" She snapped on the lights, and shook him lightly. The Doctor's face was flushed and his skin was hot to the touch.

"Good job, Adric…now…explain the differential…" the Doctor muttered.

Clara hurriedly fetched a cool, damp cloth and sponged his face. "Doctor, I need you to wake up now, and talk to me."

"What did you learn in that school today, Susan?"

"Doctor, it's Clara."

"Miss you…why wouldn't you come with me?"

Clara took his hand. "I did come, Doctor. I'm here."

"Grace…"

Frowning, Clara kissed the back of his hand, then laid it gently on the coverlet. She settled the cold cloth on his forehead. "All right then…looks like I'm on my own here."

She settled herself at her desk and started typing at the computer console that the Doctor had set up for her, and which she had subsequently modified, creating a sort of search engine for herself to sift through the TARDIS's enormous memory files. So very much information…but where to start? What would help her to help an ailing Time Lord who supposedly shouldn't even be sick in the first place? Perhaps there was a clue in the names he was calling?

Adric…mathematical boy genius, long dead at the hands of the Cybermen. No help there. Susan Foreman, the Doctor's…granddaughter? That was certainly a conversation for another day. Grace Holloway. Now that was a bit more promising, a heart surgeon from 20th century California. Although Clara wasn't sure just how much help a human doctor would be. Or how she'd even begin to get there, much less find the woman. She glanced back at the Doctor, who was tossing his head on the pillow, admonishing someone called Leela to 'put down the knife, for pity's sake.'

Clara was beginning to realize that she was utterly alone, in a ship she was only just beginning to understand, in a universe that had a terrible propensity for cruel jokes. Well, no. Maybe not quite alone. There was only one thing she could think of to try. It was completely irrational, but then again, here she was, traveling through time and space with a thousand year old man in a box. With a final glance back towards the Doctor, she rose and made her way to the control room.

She drew in a deep breath and laid her hands on the console. "TARDIS?" she began tentatively. "Can you hear me? I know you can't talk to me. I know that only happened the one time, but can you hear me? The Doctor is ill. Really, really ill, with a terrible fever, and I don't know what to do for him. Is there any way you can help me? Or show me where to go for help? Please? It's an awfully…big…universe out there."

* * *

The TARDIS was delighted - the sweet girl was talking to her! None of the others had done that, only ever the Doctor. Now, what was she saying? Ill? Fever? The TARDIS checked her medical database. Clara seemed to be referring to some sort of organic malfunction. The Doctor was not generally prone to such things, but her sensors were reading a markedly elevated body temperature, and he did seem to be speaking to companions long gone.

* * *

The screen in front of Clara lit up, displaying a medical scan of the Doctor. A red tell tale flashed and an alarm beeped. "Yes, that's it," Clara said encouragingly. "That's not normal. His temperature shouldn't be that high, and he's talking to people that aren't here. Now, what can we do about it?"

* * *

The TARDIS obligingly flashed a series of medical diagnostics across the screen.

* * *

Clara stared at the series of images flickering across the screen. She recognized the symbols as Gallifreyan, the Doctor had shown her that much, but she was nowhere near able to translate them. "I'm sorry…I don't understand. Oh, I do wish you could talk!"

* * *

The TARDIS also wished very much that she still possessed the power of speech…it would make this all so much easier. Clara required someone who could understand Gallifreyan medical diagnostics, and communicate with her directly, preferably someone who could travel independently. There was someone in the database who fit those parameters. The TARDIS promptly dispatched a distress signal.

* * *

"Hello, Sweetie."

Clara stared in shock at the strange, curly haired woman who materialized in front of her. "Who are you? How'd you get here?"

For her part, River Song was equally surprised to be confronted with a strange woman in the TARDIS control room, with no Doctor in sight. "I am Dr. River Song. And you sent me a distress signal."

"Doctor? Medical doctor?" Clara asked hopefully.

"Archaeologist."

"I asked the TARDIS for help, for the Doctor.. No offense, but why would she send me an archaeologist?"

River raised a hand for silence. "Wait. You asked the TARDIS for help?"

"The Doctor told me a story about how the TARDIS has a personality…a soul, and that once she was transplanted into a person, and he could talk to her, and well, I was just about out of options, so yes, I asked the TARDIS for help. And please don't tell me that's crazy, 'cuz just look around us."

"Point taken. Why do you need help? Where's the Doctor?"

"He's sick."

"Sick? He doesn't get sick."

"Fine," Clara snapped, exasperated, "maybe you people call it something different out here, but where I come from, fever and delirium equals 'sick.'"

"Take me to him."


	2. Chapter 2

"OSWIN!" the Doctor cried out. "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…"

Clara hurried to his side and cupped his face in her hands. "Hush, Doctor, it's all right. I'm here now."

"Why couldn't I save you?"

"You didn't have to, Doctor. I saved you, remember?"

"Remember…" The Doctor's voice trailed off into a sigh.

"That's right, you rest now," Clara crooned, dropping a light kiss on his forehead. She looked back at River a little sheepishly. "He can't keep going on like this, he's going to hurt himself."

"Oswin? Is that your name?" River asked, a trifle awkwardly.

"Well, one of them. It gets a bit complicated."

"Doesn't it always?"

"You can call me Clara."

"Did something happen to Oswin?"

"She was converted to a Dalek."

"Something not even he could fix. He doesn't like things he can't fix."

"I've noticed," Clara agreed.

"What else happened to her?" River asked shrewdly.

"She died, saving the Doctor and his friends."

"Amy and Rory?"

Clara nodded. "Did you know them?"

"Oh, yes," River replied with a rather misty smile. She shook herself out of her reverie. "Right then, let's see what we can do." She scanned the Doctor with his own sonic screwdriver. "Elevated body temperature, face flushed, and **who** is Tegan?" she added, trying to make out the words the Doctor was mumbling now.

Clara typed the name into her search engine. "Earth, 20th century, a flight attendant. No help there."

River paced, thinking out loud. "He shouldn't be ill, but he obviously is, and we have to find some way to bring this temperature down…even his body can't maintain this for too long."

"Any ideas?" Clara asked, absently scratching her arm.

River reached out and took hold of her arm. "What's this?" she asked examining the patch of tiny, pale blisters on Clara's arm.

"Oh, that. We just visited a planet called Tarusia. The trees there are really pretty, and I was climbing one to see the flowers. I fell into a nest…some kind of creepy little spider things." She shuddered slightly at the memory. "Took three showers to stop feeling that they were still crawling on me."

"And the Doctor pulled you out?" River guessed.

Clara nodded.

River pushed back the Doctor's sleeves, revealing several angry red, oozing lesions.

"I don't understand," Clara said, examining her own arms. "We were bitten by the same things."

River scanned Clara with the sonic. "Tarusian Tree Spiders. You must have some sort of natural immunity to their venom."

Clara thought for a moment. "All right then. Antibodies can be synthesized."

"True," River mused, "but it's not my field of expertise. I'm not even sure the TARDIS has the correct facilities."

"Then we are going to find an expert **and** facilities and we **are** going to save him." Clara turned back to her computer and typed in another inquiry. "What about this fellow? Strax?"

"The Sontaran who was reprogrammed to act as a nurse? Yes, he should do nicely."

"Can you find him?" Clara asked.

"Yes, I can," River replied, heading off for the control room.

She muttered to herself as she set coordinates on the console. "Jack the Ripper…that was 1888...add a couple more years for them to have returned and reconstitute Strax…"

"Where are we going?"

"Earth. London. Late nineteenth century."

Suddenly a terrific jolt knocked both women off their feet.

"What the hell was that?" Clara demanded, pulling herself up on the railing.

River quickly analyzed the data on the screens. "We can't materialize. One of us is active in this time and place. We can't risk crossing our own timeline."

"It's me, or…one of the other me's. The Doctor said he met me in London in 1892."

"And you died there, too?" River asked intently.

Clara nodded.

River reset the coordinates for 1893 and tried again. This time, the TARDIS materialized in an elegant drawing room.

Madame Vastra greeted them warmly when they emerged from the blue police box. "Dr. Song. And you," she said, smiling kindly at Clara, "I see he found you after all."

"We need Strax," River said crisply. "The Doctor seems to be having a very dangerous allergic reaction to some spider venom."

"Of course," Vastra replied, tugging on an elegant bell pull. "It's perfectly all right, my dear," she assured Clara, who hesitated in the TARDIS doorway. "I am a friend of the Doctor."

"Will I die again, if I come out there?" Clara asked in a small voice.

"No, you're perfectly safe," River replied. "I reset the coordinates for a year after the death of your…previous self. And besides, I won't let anything happen to you."

"You don't even know me."

"No, I don't. But the Doctor chose you to travel with him, so I'll look after you until he's well again."

"As will we," Vastra added. "You coaxed the Doctor back into living when the grief from the loss of his friends had driven him into solitude up on that cloud of his. We will protect you, and him, for as long as need be."

"That's what it means to be a friend of the Doctor," Jenny added, from the doorway. Strax, lacking the ability to nod his agreement, gave a stiff half bow.

Clara took a deep breath and stepped out into Vastra's drawing room. "All right then, let's get to work."


	3. Chapter 3

"Go on," River encouraged. "She seems to like you. It worked before, after all."

Clara laid her hand on the console. "TARDIS? Can you hear me? We need you to make a room for us, a medical laboratory, so Strax can work out a cure for the Doctor. Can you do that for us? Please?"

A screen on the console lit up, displaying a map to a new room.

"Thank you!"

"She can talk to the TARDIS?" Madame Vastra asked in wonder.

"Apparently so," River replied.

"How's the Doctor?" Clara asked, as Jenny returned to the control room.

"Properly off his head. First he's offering us jelly babies, whatever that may be -"

"Sweets, from Earth," Clara interjected absently. "My dad fancied them, when he was a kid."

"- and then he's going on about going for a W-A-L-K."

Strax marched into the control room, snapped his heels together smartly and proceeded to make a report. "I have modified a thermal blanket from the ship's survival supplies and utilized it in an attempt to stabilize the Doctor's body temperature. What is the significance of wearing a stalk of celery in one's lapel? The Doctor seemed quite adamant about the subject."

* * *

Again, the TARDIS found herself wishing she could talk. She could tell them so many stories - all about jelly babies, and an overly clever dog-like robot, and the time when the Doctor was a fair haired young man in a cricket sweater.

* * *

Strax looked around at the lab the TARDIS had created for him. "This facility is adequate," he announced. He pointed to Clara. "Let me see your arm, boy."

"Girl!" all three women exclaimed.

Clara extended her arm rather cautiously.

"This will not hurt a bit, human scum," Strax informed her, running a scanner over the blisters. "Tarusian Tree Spider bites, the same as the Doctor."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Jenny protested. "Clara isn't sick, and those bites don't look anything like the ones the Doctor's got."

"This boy-"

"Girl!"

"-appears to have a natural immunity to the venom. Curious, since she is not a native of Tarusia."

"One mystery at a time," River answered. "What we need to know is this - can you synthesize the antibodies in Clara's blood into something that will help the Doctor?"

"Yes. I will require a blood sample to work with."

"I shall go check on the Doctor," Madame Vastra said, excusing herself.

* * *

The TARDIS noted more changes in the Doctor's vital signs. She hoped his friends would move right along with whatever they were working on. Although regeneration was always a last resort for the Doctor, should his physical condition deteriorate badly enough, she'd grown quite fond of this particular incarnation, and wasn't ready to say goodbye just yet.

* * *

"Doctor, you must calm yourself!" Vastra exclaimed. She and Jenny were trying to restrain his thrashing limbs. "Strax! Hurry!"

"No! NO! I must save the child! I must!"

River leaned in close to him. "Doctor, you did save the child. She's fine, truly."

"No…Amy's child…must save the child!"

"I'm here, Doctor, and Amy is…Amy is fine." River's voice trembled a bit, but it wasn't entirely a lie, and they had to calm him.

"Strax! Now!"

Strax charged into the room, injector at the ready. "Stand aside!" He applied the injector to the side of the Doctor's neck and activated it.

The Doctor's body went rigid, and then just as suddenly, limp.

"Was that meant to happen that way?" Jenny wondered.

"I do not know," Strax reported. "Insufficient data."

River clutched one of the Doctor's hands. "Don't you leave me," she murmured, "don't you dare leave me!"

"Doctor?" Clara reached out to touch his face, and a radiant smile brightened her features. "He's sweating…the fever's broken."

Vastra smiled and clapped Strax on the shoulder.

"Clara?" the Doctor whispered, opening his eyes.

"I'm here," she whispered, blinking back a fine sheen of tears from her eyes.

"So am I, sweetie," River added.

The Doctor turned his head on the pillow. "Two of the loveliest ladies in the universe in the same place...I haven't died, have I?"

"Not quite," Vastra told him.

"Vastra? Then where are Jenny, and Strax?"

"Right here, Doctor."

He struggled to raise himself up.

"Gently, now. You've been very ill," River said, adjusting the pillow behind his back.

"I don't get ill," the Doctor muttered indignantly.

"You certainly did this time. Although, if it will spare your dignity, I suppose you could call it an acute allergic reaction."

"What to?"

"Tarusian Tree Spider venom."

"What? Those teensy weensy little vermin-y things?"

"That live in the nest, in the pretty tree, that I fell into," Clara affirmed.

"But the pretty tree was worth it, wasn't it?" the Doctor murmured, with that boyish grin that melted her heart.

"Yes."

"Sentimental idiot," River grumbled under her breath.

The Doctor turned back to her. "River?" he asked. "How did you get here?"

"Vortex manipulator, as usual."

"But how did you know?"

"Clara asked the TARDIS for help, and the TARDIS sent me a distress signal."

"What? But how…?"

"You told her the story about the time the TARDIS's matrix was transferred into a living person and you were able to talk to her."

"So Clara spoke **directly **to the old girl and asked for help?"

"Yes," River smiled. "Which is so illogical as to be totally brilliant."

"Clever girl."

"A pair of clever girls," River agreed, "who were both determined not to lose you. You seem to have that effect on women, I've noticed."

The Doctor had the good grace to blush.

"I am suddenly feeling quite superfluous here," Vastra announced to the room at large.

"Never, old friend," the Doctor assured her, clasping her hand warmly.

"Anything we can fetch for you, Doctor?" Jenny asked, smiling.

"Well, now that you mention it, I could do with some fish fingers and custard!" he replied eagerly.

* * *

The TARDIS happily programmed the kitchen for fish fingers and custard, and something a bit more palatable for the others. It was, after all, a rather special occasion.

* * *

Clara watched as River steered the TARDIS away from nineteenth century London, having returned Vastra and the others home. "River? Why doesn't the TARDIS's computer have any files on you? Look, I don't mean to be rude, but, well some of the things the Doctor cried out when he was sick…"

"You're curious. It's all right, that's why he likes you." River looked down at the console for a long moment. "It's…complicated," she finally replied, with a small, tight smile. She knew quite well that there was a plethora of information about her in the TARDIS's data base, and was very grateful that the Doctor's encrypting skills exceeded Clara's hacking skills, at least for the moment.

Clara extended her hand. "Thank you…I couldn't've done this without you."

River clasped Clara's hand warmly. "I rather suspect that you would have found a way, but you're welcome. It was my pleasure. You will look after him, won't you?"

Clara nodded, stepping back as River began typing commands into the vortex manipulator.

* * *

If the TARDIS could have smiled, she would have. It would take quite some doing for Clara to get through **her** encryption, so River's secrets were safe…for the moment, anyway.

* * *

The Doctor wandered into the control room and laid his hand affectionately on the console. "Hello, old girl. I understand I have you to thank for saving me. Well, you and Clara. All right, you, Clara, River, Vastra, Jenny, and Strax. But mostly you and Clara, because she was smart enough to ask you for help, and you were kind enough to give it."

"You're welcome…I think," Clara murmured.

The Doctor looked around, startled, then spotted her sitting on the steps on the far side of the console. "Hey…I was wondering where you'd got to."

Clara smiled and extended her hand to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Right as rain, thanks to you." Grinning broadly, the Doctor took her hand and sat down beside her. "So, how many times is it now that you've saved my life, Clara Oswald?"

"Twice, that I know of," she replied.

The Doctor wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you. And thank you for managing not to get yourself killed this time."

"I had help."

"Yes…yes, you did," he replied, glancing fondly around the control room. "I understand I did quite a bit of talking in my sleep," he added.

"You did, indeed."

"I, er, hope it wasn't anything too dodgy," the Doctor said, blushing furiously.

"No, not really," Clara assured him. There was a twinkle in her eyes, however, that made the Doctor just a trifle nervous. She slid her arms about his waist and settled her head comfortably against his chest. "Tell me a story."

"What kind of story?"

"Tell me about some of the other people who've traveled with you."

"Shall I tell you about the time that Nyssa, Tegan, Adric, and I went to a fancy dress party?"

* * *

The TARDIS hummed contentedly to herself as she listened to the Doctor's voice, spinning an old tale for his new companion.


End file.
